


I'm With You

by patchwork_panda



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ancient Magus Bride AU, Howl's Moving Castle inspired, Keith is a runaway, Keith starts at 17, M/M, Shiro is Cursed, Shiro is a Wizard, Wizard AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 10:35:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15794766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchwork_panda/pseuds/patchwork_panda
Summary: Ancient Magus Bride/Howl's Moving Castle influenced story.On a cold, rainy night, three months before his eighteenth birthday, Keith runs away from an abusive foster home. He is found by a passing wizard, a mysterious man who only goes by the name “Shiro,” who takes Keith in and gives him a home. He begins tutoring Keith in magic and as time passes, Keith begins to feel a growing attraction to his new master. But it seems Shiro has some secrets of his own, dangerous secrets that he refuses share with Keith. Is Keith being raised as a sacrifice for some dark magic ritual?  What’s wrong with Shiro’s arm? And what does everyone seem to know about Keith that Keith himself doesn’t know?*fic title comes from the Avril Lavigne song.





	I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

> I started with some inspiration during a shit day at work and then lost it. If this makes even one person happy, then I'll be happy too ;w;  
> I really don't know what I'm doing.

He’s standing on a bridge. The metal of the street lamp he leans against is ice-cold, the chill cutting through the soaked hoodie plastered against his skin, but he can hardly feel it. His fingertips have long since gone numb and it only made sense that the rest of his body followed. The bruise is still fresh on his cheek, the bright red fading to a dull plum and the cut on his lip had clotted, an ugly red slash on a field of soft pink tinged with the faintest traces of blue. 

He sighs and his breath streams out from between his lips like smoke after a long drag on a cigarette. Silently, he watches it dissipate as the deluge continues around him unabated. The cold rain feels soothing against his skin—like an ice pack.

He doesn’t know what time it is. No smartphone in his pocket, no identifying papers, nothing except a few crumpled dollar bills and a piece of gum. And even if he had a smartphone, he would’ve thrown it into the river first chance he got. There was no going back and he would throw himself over the bridge before he let them track his location.

It must have been hours. No one had come looking for him and he instantly hated himself for even thinking about it.

The bruise on his cheek throbs painfully.

His scowl deepening, he stuffs his hands further into his pockets, into the little warmth that remains in his body. He can tell his ripped jeans are soaked up past the ankles. His socks squish horribly in his shoes and the puddles around him are coalescing into lakes but still he does not move.

Where was he supposed to go?

Even if he found a dry place to stay for the night, it didn’t mean he would be able to go back in the morning.

Back.

He could never go back. Not to that place. Not after tonight. 

He shivered and tucked his body further into his clothes. A “hothead” they’d called him back at the foster agency. It was in his files and everything, a word that followed him wherever he went. He hadn’t devoted a lot of thought to the word but tonight it made sense. He’d run out into the night with nothing more than the clothes on his back and these were hardly suitable for a long trip away. Clearly he wasn’t very good at thinking things through.

A yellow light down the street flickers and he looks up, his attention drawn. But there is nobody there. Just a flickering street lamp and the pounding rain battering the bus station to his right. And there will be no more buses tonight. He’s already checked. His eyes wander over the edge of the bridge and towards the water, where the ripples have turned to waves and the surface roils like a boiling vat of soup. 

It couldn’t be much colder in there than it was out here. He takes a step forward.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

At once, he looks up. A well-dressed man in a black, hooded trench coat had materialized in the shadows underneath the flickering street light. He stood so still and so quietly that it were as if he had always been there, holding that great black umbrella above his head... watching Keith. The sound of the rain seems to fade.

“What do you want?”

Keith’s words have none of their intended force and the man steps off the sidewalk; he does not look both ways as he crosses the street.

“Did you run away from home?” the man in black inquires politely, not answering Keith’s question. He continues his approach with eyes focused straight ahead, seemingly unaware of the pouring rain. There are no cars in sight and the street light behind him flickers again.

Keith doesn’t answer either. He only looks up when the umbrella is directly above his head. The man makes a motion as if to hand the umbrella to Keith, but Keith doesn’t take it. The man smiles. His trench coat is perfectly dry.

“It’s dangerous to be out this late, you know. Someone like you should be inside, preferably somewhere safe and warm.”

“What do you want?” Keith asks again, weary. The chill must be getting to him; he doesn’t even have enough energy to muster up a proper glare but the man doesn’t seem to take offense at his tone. He merely takes a step closer.

“May I?” He phrases it as a simple request and although Keith doesn’t fully understand what the man means, he nods.

Soft as a whisper, a white-gloved hand comes out of the man’s pocket and rests on his unbruised cheek, large and warm, absolutely nothing like the last hand that had touched his face. Keith doesn’t resist and allows the man to lift his chin up. For the first time, he gets a good look at this mysterious stranger. Up close, he appears surprisingly young, with sturdy cheekbones and thick dark brows. East Asian, like Keith. His dark eyes are impassive, appraising.

“Violet,” the man mouths, scanning Keith’s face, his eyes coming to a rest on the young man’s irises. “Very striking. Beautiful.”

The corner of Keith’s mouth twitches and the man notices. His eyebrows furrow.

“You don’t like that, do you?”

It was more of a statement than a question and Keith doesn’t respond. Instead, his eyes settle upon the wide scar slashed across the man’s nose but the man doesn’t seem to mind, seeming quite occupied with inspecting Keith’s face, his dark eyes roving over the young man’s features. Keith only winces when the stranger turns his cheek to look at the bruise.

“I see.”

His hand falls and his smile fades.

“What’s your name?”

“Keith.”

“Keith. How old are you, Keith?” 

Twenty. He opens his mouth to respond.

“Seventeen. But my birthday’s in three months.”

His jaw snaps shut. That wasn’t what he meant to say. The man chuckles, a low, pleasant sound resonating from deep within his chest. Keith’s cheeks heat up; the stranger is clearly amused.

“You couldn’t have waited a few more months?”

“You couldn’t have minded your own business?” Keith retorts, confused but irritated.

A sharp glare sends the man’s gloved hand into the air, palm facing him in a disarming gesture but he does not back away. If anything, he seems even more amused.

“I guess not,” he responds, his smile somewhat sheepish. “It’s a pretty cold night after all. And late. Very late.”

Keith doesn’t respond and the stranger sighs.

“Well, Keith, if it’s all the same to you, why don’t you come with me? I’ve got a house not too far from here and I could use some company tonight. It’s lonely out here, don’t you think?”

Thinking carefully about his choice of words, Keith sizes up the man. He knows how he must look: a small, pathetic creature with lank black hair in an oversized waterlogged hoodie, bristling with nerves like a half-drowned feral cat. Pitiable and not dangerous in the least. Easy prey for the kind of people who lurk on dark street corners late at night. But as far as getting propositioned to by strange men in the dead of night goes, he could definitely do much worse. This man wasn’t bad looking to say the least and he was offering Keith a place to stay for the night. On a scale of one to serial killer, he was probably a four at the most. And he was right about one thing.

It wasn’t as if Keith had anywhere else to go.

“What do you say?”

Something about his expression makes Keith want to trust him. His eyes are soft and kind and he regards Keith with something the runaway isn’t used to seeing. When the man extends a hand and waits Keith realizes that for the first time in years, he’s actually wanted. As he stares at the man’s long, gloved fingers, just inches away, he makes up his mind.

“Alright.” 

He takes the man’s hand in a firm grip and steps under the enormous umbrella. 

At once, there is a blast of sudden heat; his hood is blown back off his head and his eyes are forced shut from the sheer strength of it. But just as quickly as it started, it disappears. His heart pounding, he opens his eyes and darts out from the canopy of the umbrella despite his companion’s concerned shout. But there’s nothing there. Just the cold and the rain and the icy wind tearing through his clothes like they had all night and he turns to see that the mysterious man has extended his arm to hold the umbrella high over Keith’s head. The shoulders of his coat are still pristine and dry and his gloved hand is back in his pocket.

“Shall we?” he asks, his lip quirking upward in a barely contained laugh and Keith decides not to say anything. In fact, he doesn’t say anything until they reach their destination and he takes a good look at the place while his companion is unlocking the door. 

Before him is a large two-story house, one of many on their street, seemingly not too different from its neighbors with same brick facade and light shutters, even a small garden out front with colorful flowers swaying in the storm. But something’s not right.

At first glance, the dilapidated roof tiles don’t look unusual, just poorly nailed down. However, as Keith takes in the structure as a whole, he starts to see a pattern, as if the tiles were purposely arranged in a certain way. And as his eyes skim the rooftop, he sees something that looks like a turret hidden behind a particularly large chimney. With a start, he realizes that with the exception of the turret, the entire house is perfectly symmetrical and that what he took for normal flowers in the garden were species of odd herbs that he had never seen before. Before he can get a better look, the lock clicks open and the man leads him inside.

“This way.”

His eyes darting about the house, Keith follows the man out of the dimly lit foyer into a spacious living room, where several luxurious armchairs are spread out across the chamber and the shelves are lined with hardbound books. As he walks into the room, a fire instantly comes to life in the grates, the sudden burst of heat and light startling him so much that he jumps back with an embarrassing yelp. With shock, he sees that his host is nowhere near the fireplace and that his hands are back in his pockets.

“H-how did you do that?” Keith asks, not taking another step further inside, watching with unease as the man takes off his coat at last. He turns to face Keith.

A shock of white hair falls over his dark eyes, his silhouette illuminated an intense orange by the light of the fire as he hangs up his outerwear near its warmth. The scar appears even more deeply cut into his nose thanks to the long shadows cast by the flames and as the man’s gaze sweeps over Keith’s figure, the youngster can’t help but clutch his hands to his sides and shiver. The man frowns.

“We should get you out of these wet clothes,” Keith’s host says instead of answering. “There’s a bathroom down the hallway with a big tub. I think a warm bath might do you good.”

Keith squints at him suspiciously.

“Who are you?” He pauses, wrapping his arms around himself more tightly. “What are you?”

The man sighs.

“I’m sorry, Keith. I wish I could tell you but the truth is... I’m not so sure of the answer myself.”

He looks so down that Keith suddenly feels sorry for him. The feeling takes him by surprise.

“Then... what do I call you?” he asks at last.

The man thinks for a moment, hums, scratching at his chin as he thinks on an answer. Not necessarily suspicious, Keith decides. Just odd.

“Shiro,” the man says at last. The name is strange and clumsy on his tongue, as if he hadn’t used it in some time. “Call me Shiro.”


End file.
